Ch. 15 / Pt. 3 : When They Wear the Mask

Memory was a curse. Of this, Paul Somers felt certain.

He sat on one of the two curving stairways descending from the second floor landing to the mansion’s entry hall. He didn’t know what else to do or where else to do it. The projecting had left him utterly spent, mentally burnt and physically exhausted. He felt incapable of anything besides sitting and, unfortunately, thinking.

To his right, to the right of his particular stairway, a broad corridor outlet into a slender sitting room and, beyond that, the kitchen and dining areas. Dining areas, plural. To his left, the entry hall narrowed into a doorless threshold, beyond which a small, circular tea room—really an antechamber—awaited. The southern entrance to the Blackwood Library stood in the antechamber’s northern wall. 

To the left of that hallway, another set of stairs curved elegantly upward. To the left of those…

Paul tried to map the mansion in his head as a way of distracting himself from his thoughts, but his thoughts clawed and rattled and snarled with unrelenting endurance. It didn’t take long for him to start thinking them again.

The Mask hadn’t needed to drill into his mind to give him nightmares. The flashes and glimpses, the seconds-long scents and sensations that had whirled through him during their brief interaction had done enough. 

Before crash-landing his life in Oceanrest, Paul had worked as a consultant to the NYPD, as well as police in Nassau and even Suffolk counties. Before that, post-Quantico, he’d worked at the BAU. People had once considered him an extremely promising mind, maybe among the top fifty in his field. Slowly, all of that potential had become…something else.

He and Anjuli, his ex-wife, had had fertility problems. And while this originally bothered them, the growing stress of their Masters and Doctoral studies and, subsequently, their careers, had turned the seeming curse into an unmentioned blessing. Until somehow the miracle occurred. They hadn’t had Cassandra Somers by accident, of course, but the pregnancy had come as a surprise. In the overwhelm of responsibility that followed, Paul’s career suffered. After a few years of sinking deeper into obscurity in an already-obscure field, he over-corrected. Maybe he’d done it out of spite. In retrospect, he’d probably done it out of spite. Spite and resent.

But he hadn’t seen it that way, back then.

And, of course, he hadn’t seen the way Anjuli’s career had suffered, either.

Paul Somers blinked. To the right of his staircase, a broad corridor outlet into a slender sitting room and, beyond that, the kitchen and dining areas. Dining areas, plural. He’d hurt so many people with his myopia. Sometimes, he wanted to forget it all. Sometimes, he wanted to disappear.

The worst thing about seeing the dead, and hearing them, and feeling them, was the same as the worst thing about everything else: he had to remember all of it.

His daughter, Cassandra Somers, had died at sixteen-almost-seventeen years old, the drunk driver in a drunk driving accident that had left four bodies behind, including hers. The booze in her system had come from their apartment liquor cabinet. The amphetamines had come from his stash—bottles both legally prescribed and illicitly attained—and the painkillers had come from Anjuli’s prescription. Cassandra Somers had had so many drugs in her system at her time of death that the M.E. had been shocked that she hadn’t just overdosed.

To the left of the stairs, the entry hall narrowed into a doorless threshold, beyond which a small, circular tea room—really an antechamber—awaited. The southern entrance to the Blackwood Library stood in the antechamber’s northern wall. 

“Hey,” Rehani said, snapping him back to reality. She leaned against the railing in a multi-hue wrap of dress. Holding a densely-rolled joint toward him, she added, “Look like you could use a hit.”

Shifting to face her, he hesitated as his mind caught up to reality. Awkwardly chuckling, he accepted the gift. “Sorry. Thanks. Yeah.” He maneuvered, searching himself for a lighter. “Any chance you—”

With half a smirk, Rehani held out a flame.

“Thanks,” Paul repeated.

“Nothin’,” Rehani answered. As Paul inhaled his first drag, she killed her match with a snap of her wrist. While Paul understood that she’d lit the match to spark the joint, he couldn’t recall watching her strike it. He didn’t remember seeing a matchbook, either. Pocketing the burnt matchstick, Rehani continued, “You see something in that place you can’t shake off?”

“No,” he answered, maybe too-suddenly. “No, it’s not that. Not exactly.”

“Just thinking?”

“Yeah.” He took a second puff, this one seething in his lungs. He coughed, tucked his face into his elbow, and coughed again.

“Mm. Been having problems with that, myself.”

Paul nodded, still choked on heat. After another couple coughs and a sandpaper-raw clearing of the throat, he said, “I’m sorry about…I meant to ask, after…”

“Better you didn’t,” she replied. “With the shit this close to the fan, we need to stay focused.”

He held the joint back toward her. “But on the right things.”

“Exactly.” She puffed the cherry back to life. Flicked the butt gently enough to brush off the barest layer of ash. “Or at least…the pressing things.”

He nodded, not knowing what else to say. They passed the joint back and forth a few times. To his left, the entry hall narrowed into a doorless threshold, beyond which a small, circular tea room—really an antechamber—awaited.

Staring at nothing, mellow and detached, Paul broke the silence. “My daughter, you know, she was the first one I saw. The first ghost, I mean.”

Rehani, disappearing the remnant roach, peered down at him. “Like, what did we just talk about?”

Paul frowned. Remembered. Chuckled. “Right.”

A muffled mrow reached them through the double front doors. The two of them, both weed-buzzed, merely watched as the doors bucked, opened, and shut again. By the time Paul and Rehani both moved to help, Deirdre had already managed to shove her way into the entry hall, cat-carrier first. Usually a very quiet cat, Samedi yowled and whimpered in the cage, pacing in small circles. Barely inside, Deirdre set the cat carrier down and opened the gate.

Samedi shot out, faster than Paul had ever seen him move before, and sprinted away.

A couple seconds later, Victor entered, a weekender bag hanging from one hand. “I could’ve gotten that,” he said.

Deirdre didn’t reply. Instead, she pivoted her stance to face Victor, Rehani, and Paul all at once. “I think I have a plan.”

Before anyone could ask for details, a delighted squeal echoed out from the library.

“Nora!” Olly shouted. “Come meet this gorgeous fuckin’ slonk!”

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